Weekly Quote from The Secret Doctrine by HPB - Weekly Quote from The Secret Doctrine by HPB Archives at Zinester. Inspirational

__Again, number seven is closely connected with the occult significance of the Pleiades, those seven daughters of Atlas, "the six present, the seventh hidden." In India they are connected with their nursling, the war god, Karttikeya. It is the Pleiades (in Sanskrit, Krittika) who gave the god their name, for Karttikeya is the planet Mars, astronomically. As a god he is the son of Rudra, born without the intervention of a woman. He is a Kumara, a "virgin youth" again, generated in the fire from the Seed of Siva - the holy spirit - hence called Agni-bhu. The late Dr. Kenealy believed that, in India, Karttikeya is the secret symbol of the cycle of Naros, composed of 600, 666, and 777 years, according to whether it is solar or lunar, divine or mortal, years that are counted; and the six visible, or the seven actual sisters, the Pleiades, are needed for the completion of this most secret and mysterious of all the astronomical and religious symbols. Therefore, when made to commemorate one particular event, Karttikeya appeared, of old, as a Kumara, an ascetic, with six heads - one for each century of the Naros. When the symbolism was needed for another event, then, in conjunction with the seven sidereal sisters, Karttikeya is seen accompanied by Kaumara (or Sena) his female aspect. He is then riding on a peacock - the bird of Wisdom and Occult Knowledge, and the Hindu Phoenix, whose Greek relation with the 600 years of Naros is well known. A six-rayed star (double triangle) a Swastica, a six and occasionally seven-pointed crown is on his brow; the peacock's tail represents the sidereal heavens; and the twelve signs of the Zodiac are hidden on his body; for which he is also called Dwadasa Kara," ("the twelve-handed"), and Dwadasaksha, "twelve-eyed." It is as Sakti-dhara, however, the "Spear-holder," and the conqueror of Taraka, "Taraka-jit," that he is shown most famous.

__The years of the Naros, being (in India) counted in two ways - either "100 years of the gods," (divine years) - or 100 mortal years - one can see the tremendous difficulty for the non-initiated in comprehending correctly this cycle, which plays such an important part in St. John's Revelation. It is the truly apocalyptic Cycle; yet in none of the numerous speculations about it have we found anything but a few approximate truths, because of its being of various lengths and relating to various pre-historic events.

__It has been urged against the duration claimed by the Babylonians for their divine ages, that Suidas shows the ancients counting, in their chronological computations, days for years. Dr. Sepp in his ingenious plagiarism - exposed elsewhere - of the Hindu 432 in thousands and millions of years (the duration of the Yugas) which he dwarfed to 4,320 lunar years before the "birth of Christ" - as "foreordained" in the sidereal (besides the invisible) heavens, and proved "by the apparition of the Star of Bethlehem" - appeals to Suidas and his authority. But Suidas had no other warrant for it than his own speculations, and he was no Initiate. He cites, as a proof, Vulcan, in showing him as having, according to chronological claim, reigned 4,477 years, i.e., 4,477 days, as he thinks, or rendered in years, 12 years, 3 months, and 7 days; he has 5 days in his original - thus committing an error even in such an easy calculation. (See Suidas, art. "Hhlio" .) True, there are other ancient writers guilty of like fallacious speculations - Calisthenes, for instance, who assigns to the astronomical observations of the Chaldeans only 1,903 years, whereas Epigenes recognises 720,000 years (Pliny, Histor. Natur., Lib. VII. c. 56.) The whole of these hypotheses made by profane writers are based upon and due to a misunderstanding. The chronology of all the Western peoples, ancient Greeks and Romans, was borrowed from India. Now, it is said in the Tamil edition of Bagavadam that 15 solar days make a Paccham; two paccham (or 30 days) are a month of the mortals, adding that such a month is only one day of the Pitar Devata (Pitris). Again, two of these months constitute a roodoo, three roodoo make an ayanam, and two ayanams a year - which year of the mortals is but a day of the gods. It is on such misunderstood teachings that some Greeks have imagined that all the initiated priests had transformed days into years!

__This mistake of the ancient Greek and Latin writers became pregnant with results in Europe. At the close of the past and the beginning of this century, relying upon the purposely mutilated accounts of Hindu chronology, brought from India by certain too zealous and as unscrupulous missionaries, Bailly, Dupuis, and others built quite a fantastic theory upon the subject. Because the Hindus had made half a revolution of the moon, a measure of time; and because a month composed of only fifteen days - of which Quint. Curtius speaks (Menses in quinos dies descriperunt dies. Quint. Curt. LVIII., c. 9) - is found mentioned in Hindu literature, therefore, it is a verified fact that their year was only half a year, when it was not called a day. The Chinese, too, divided their Zodiac into twenty-four parts, hence their year into twenty-four fortnights, but such computation did not, nor does it prevent their having an astronomical year just the same as ours. And they have a period of sixty days - the Southern Indian Roodoo, to this day in some provinces. Moreover, Diodorus Siculus (Lib. I. Sec. 26, p. 30) calls "thirty days an Egyptian year," or that period during which the moon performs a complete revolution. Pliny and Plutarch both speak of it (Hist. Nat. Lib. VII., c. 48, Vol. III., p. 185, and Life of Numa, Sec. 16); but does it stand to reason that the Egyptians, who knew astronomy as well as any other people did, made the lunar month consist of thirty days, when it is only twenty-eight days with fractions? This lunary period had an occult meaning surely as much as the Ayanam and the roodoo of the Hindus had. The year of two months' duration, and the period of sixty days also, was a universal measure of time in antiquity, as Bailly himself shows in his Traite de l'Astronomie Orientale. The Chinamen, according to their own books, divided their year into two parts, from one equinox to the other (Mem. Acad. Ins. T. XVI., c. 48, Tom. III., p. 183); the Arabs anciently divided the year into six seasons, each composed of two months; in the Chinese astronomical work called Kioo-tche, it is said that two moons make a measure of time, and six measures a year; and to this day the aborigines of Kamschatka have their years of six months, as they had when visited by Abbe Chappe (Voyage to Siberia, Vol. III., p. 19). But is all this a reason to say that when the Hindu Puranas say "a solar year" they mean one solar day! It is the knowledge of the natural laws that make of seven the root nature-number, so to say, in the manifested world - at any rate in our present terrestrial life-cycle - and the wonderful comprehension of its workings, that unveiled to the ancients so many of the mysteries of nature. It is these laws, again, and their processes on the sidereal, terrestrial, and moral planes, which enabled the old astronomers to calculate correctly the duration of the cycles and their respective effects on the march of events; to record beforehand (prophecy, it is called) the influence which they will have on the course and development of the human races. The Sun, Moon, and planets being the never-erring time measurers, whose potency and periodicity were well known, became thus the great Ruler and rulers of our little system in all its seven domains, or "spheres of action." *
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* The spheres of action of the combined Forces of Evolution and Karma are (1) the Super-spiritual or noumenal; (2) the Spiritual; (3) the Psychic; (4) the Astro-ethereal; (5) the Sub-astral; (6) the Vital; and (7) the purely physical spheres.
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__This has been so evident and remarkable, that even many of the modern men of Science, Materialists as well as Mystics, had their attention called to this law. Physicians and theologians, mathematicians and psychologists have drawn the attention of the world repeatedly to this fact of periodicity in the behaviour of "Nature." These numbers are explained in the "Commentaries" in these words.

__THE CIRCLE IS NOT THE "ONE" BUT THE ALL.

__IN THE HIGHER [heaven] THE IMPENETRABLE RAJAH ["ad Mutant," see Atharva-Veda X., 105], IT [the Circle] BECOMES ONE, BECAUSE [it is] THE INDIVISIBLE, AND THERE CAN BE NO TAU IN IT.

__IN THE SECOND [of the three "Rajamsi" (tritiye), or the three "Worlds"] THE ONE BECOMES TWO [male and female]; AND THREE [add the Son or logos]; AND THE SACRED FOUR ["tetractis," or the "Tetragrammaton."]

__IN THE THIRD [the lower world or our earth] THE NUMBER BECOMES FOUR, AND THREE, AND TWO.

__TAKE THE FIRST TWO, AND THOU WILT OBTAIN SEVEN, THE SACRED NUMBER OF LIFE; BLEND [the latter] WITH THE MIDDLE RAJAH, AND THOU WILT HAVE NINE, THE SACRED NUMBER OF BEING AND BECOMING." *

__When the Western Orientalists have mastered the real meaning of the Rig Vedic divisions of the World - the two-fold, three-fold, six and seven-fold, and especially the nine-fold division, the mystery of the cyclic divisions applied to heaven and earth, gods and men, will become clearer to them than it is now. For:

__"There is a harmony of numbers in all nature; in the force of gravity, in the planetary movements, in the laws of heat, light, electricity, and chemical affinity, in the forms of animals and plants, in the perception of the mind. The direction, indeed, of modern natural and physical science, is towards a generalization which shall express the fundamental laws of all, by one simple numerical ratio. We would refer to Professor Whewell's 'Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences,' and to Mr. Hay's researches into the laws of harmonious colouring and form. From these it appears that the number seven is distinguished in the laws regulating the harmonious Perception of forms, colours, and sounds, and probably of taste also, if we could analyse our sensations of this kind with mathematical accuracy." ("Medical Review," July, 1844).

__So much so, indeed, that more than one physician has stood aghast at the periodical septenary return of the cycles in the rise and fall of various complaints, and naturalists have felt themselves at an utter loss to explain this law. "The birth, growth, maturity, vital functions . . . . change, diseases, decay and death, of insects, reptiles, fishes, birds, mammals, and even of man, are more or less controlled by a law of completion in weeks," or seven days. † Dr. Laycock (Lancet, 1842-3), writing on the Periodicity of Vital Phenomena, records a "most remarkable illustration and confirmation of the law in insects." ‡
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* In Hinduism, as understood by the Orientalists from the Atharvaveda, the three rajamsi refer to the three strides of Vishnu; his ascending higher step, being taken in the highest world (A. V., VII., 99, 1, cf. I 155, 5). It is the divo rajah, or the "sky," as they take it. But it is something besides this in Occultism. The sentence pareshu, guhyeshu, vrateshu, cf. I, 155, 3, and IX., 75, 2; or again, verse X., 114, in Atharvaveda - has yet to be explained.
† H. Grattan Guinness, F.R.G.S., in his "Approaching End of the Age."
‡ Having given a number of illustrations from natural history, the doctor adds: "The facts I have briefly glanced at are general facts, and cannot happen day after day in so many millions of animals of every kind, from the larva or ovum of a minute insect up to man, at definite periods, from a mere chance or coincidence . . . I think it impossible to come to any less general conclusion than this, that in animals, changes occur every three and a half, seven, fourteen, twenty-one, or twenty-eight days, or at some definite number of weeks" or septenary cycles. Again, the same Dr. Laycock states that "Whatever type the fever may exhibit, there will be a paroxysm on the seventh day . . . the fourteenth will be remarkable as a day of amendment . . . " (either cure or death taking place). "If the fourth (paroxysm) be severe, and the fifth less so, the disease will end at the seventh paroxysm, and . . . change for the better . . . will be seen on the fourteenth day, namely, about three or four o'clock a.m., when the system is most languid." (See "Approaching End of the Age," by Grattan Guinness, pp. 258 to 269, wherein this is quoted.)
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__This is pure "soothsaying" by cyclic calculations, and it is connected with Chaldean astrolatry and astrology. Thus materialistic Science - medicine, the most materialistic of all - applies our occult laws to diseases, studies natural history with its help, recognizes its presence as a fact in nature, and yet must needs pooh-pooh the same archaic knowledge when claimed by the Occultists. For if the mysterious Septenary Cycle is a law in nature, and it is one, as proven; if it is found controlling the evolution and involution (or death) in the realms of entomology, icthyology and ornithology, as in the Kingdom of the Animal, mammalia and man - why cannot it be present and acting in Kosmos, in general, in its natural (though occult) divisions of time, races, and mental development? And why, furthermore, should not the most ancient adepts have studied and thoroughly mastered these cyclic laws under all their aspects? Indeed, Dr. Stratton states as a physiological and pathological fact, that "in health the human pulse is more frequent in the morning than in the evening for six days out of seven; and that on the seventh day it is slower." (Ibid. Edinb. Med. and Surg. Journal, Jan. 1843.) Why, then, should not an Occultist show the same in cosmic and terrestrial life in the pulse of the planet and races? Dr. Laycock divides life by three great septenary periods; the first and last, each stretching over 21 years, and the central period or prime of life lasting 28 years, or four times seven. He subdivides the first into seven distinct stages, and the other two into three minor periods, and says that "The fundamental unit of the greater periods is one week of seven days, each day being twelve hours"; and that "single and compound multiples of this unit, determine the length of these periods by the same ratio, as multiples of the unit of twelve hours determine the lesser periods. This law binds all periodic vital phenomena together, and links the periods observed in the lowest annulose animals, with those of man himself, the highest of the vertebrate." If Science does this, why should the latter scorn the Occult information, namely, that (speaking Dr. Laycock's language) "one week of the manvantaric (lunar) fortnight, of fourteen days (or seven manus), that fortnight of twelve hours in a day representing seven periods or seven races - is now passed?" This language of science fits our doctrine admirably. We (mankind) have lived over "a week of seven days, each day being twelve hours," since three and a half races are now gone forever, the fourth is submerged, and we are now in the Fifth Race.